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Chapter Eight
Clive
“You’ll never guessed what happened!” my daughter said excitedly on the other end of the line. “I got a phone call from an up-and-coming designer, Keisha Blackwell, to be her exclusive bridal retailer! She wants to see a proposal, and if we get the contract we’ll basically double the size of the store. I’ll have to see if the space is still available next door so I can just knock down a wall, or we’ll have to find a larger place . . . I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but this is like a dream come true!”
Chuckling at her rambling enthusiasm, I rolled to my feet and paced my living room, pride blooming in my chest—my baby girl, a successful businesswoman, working toward the most important deal of her career so far. The first big deal of many, I was sure.
“Honey, I’m so proud of you.” I meant it with all my heart, too, and didn’t bother to hide the emotion clogging my throat.
My daughter and I made a deal a long time ago after Amanda died—that it was always okay to show our feelings in front of each other, even messy stuff like tears or anger, or genuine happiness. As long as we were honest about it.
As long as we were honest—it left a sour taste in my mouth when I thought about the things I wasn’t telling my daughter right now, but I wasn’t ready yet. She knew that I was lonely, that I never dated all that much after her mom died, but there were pieces of that situation that I just couldn’t share.
Like, how difficult it had been to find a sexual outlet when I was doing my best to hold a shattered family together. Or that sympathetic look that people gave me when I told them I was widowed so young. I never felt good about burdening Marcie with that kind of deeply vulnerable stuff, even while I was happy to take on as much of her pain as she was willing to share.
Even though I’d kept those personal things and feelings buried deep, my daughter would probably write that off as me being entitled to my privacy. But hiding an entire relationship with her best friend probably wouldn’t go over quite so easily.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you,” Marcie said, cutting into my thoughts with laughter in her voice. “Frankie’s all tangled up with some guy, and she did the funniest thing today.”
“She did?” I asked.
My heart sped up a notch as I thought about the expensive flowers I sent to the store today. Not the most subtle thing I could do, but I was out of ideas, since she wouldn’t answer my calls or texts. Time for a gesture, I thought this morning as I entered my credit card information for the biggest arrangement I could find that didn’t look tacky and overblown when I scrolled through the options online.
“He sent her some ridiculous flower arrangement and she just chucked it all in the trash. She regretted it a few hours later, and Kresley had already saved them and put it all back together,” Marcie continued, giggling the whole time. “When she pulled out of the parking lot after we closed, she still looked pretty cranky, but she had the vase buckled into the passenger’s seat like it was a toddler or something.”
She bubbled over with laughter, and I snorted too as I pictured Frankie, sporting that scowl that I’d come to know so well, hauling the massive flower arrangement home.
“Kresley is one in a million,” I said through my chuckles. “This sounds like a real Frankie move, too.”
“Oh, totally,” Marcie agreed. “She’s…not subtle. She’ll let you know what she thinks and feels.”
I remembered our video call and the way she hung up on me after I made her feel so humiliated. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve always thought, too.”
After a few more minutes of inconsequential conversation, Marcie ended the call—promising to get in touch again in a few days.
The silence in my big, empty house without Marcie in my ear felt oppressive, especially after hearing about how Frankie reacted to my gift. I wanted to reach out with a call or a text, but I knew better. Stubborn, determined Frankie would call me when she was ready, and not a second before.
I could accept that, I decided. Even a few days after the incident, I still cringed when I remembered the mixture of anger and shame that washed over her beautiful features.
It took less time—way less—than I thought it would to hear from Frankie. Just a few minutes later, my phone buzzed on the coffee table. I practically smashed into the marble top as I dove for it. I had added her face to her contact information recently, the candid that Marcie sent me a while ago. Her lovely face lit up the screen as the phone vibrated against the cold stone, and my nervous fingers shook so much that I almost dropped it as I scrambled to answer.
“Frankie.” My voice was just a soft whisper.
“Clive, those flowers were insane.”
I grinned and flopped down on the couch. “That was the idea. What did you think? I heard that you tried to dump them, but just couldn’t resist.”
She chuckled and I heard a rustling noise, like bedsheets. “Yeah, laugh it up, asshole. Kres and Marcie were both dying to ask me who sent them, but they know I’m like a vault with that kind of thing.”
“Look, all I know is that you drove home with the flowers buckled into the front seat. Which I appreciate, because those things fucking bankrupted me,” I teased, when I wanted to fling myself on her mercy—beg for forgiveness, anything—but it seemed easier to stick to jokes.
Playful moments had never been hard with Frankie. It was the other stuff—our complicated situation, my history, the people who could be hurt—those were the really difficult things.
Frankie took a deep breath. “Clive, what is it you want?”
I shifted to my back and stuffed a throw pillow under my head. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. For the stupid, shitty thing I said the other night. For all the other dumb stuff that came out of my mouth before that. I’m really sorry.”
Her voice was hesitant when she answered. Soft. “I’m sorry too—I could have heard you out, maybe. But I was just so pissed off and hurt, and I didn’t want to spend another second talking to you right then. If you haven’t noticed, I’m a little bit of a hot head when I’m upset,” she murmured.
